


Eight Feet Under (And No Air to Breathe)

by DustySoul



Category: Daredevil (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Buried Alive, Canon Disabled Character, Cuddling & Snuggling, Disabled Character, Fluff, Gen, Horror, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Party Games, Platonic Cuddling, Sharing a Bed, Trust
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-28
Updated: 2015-05-09
Packaged: 2018-03-26 04:37:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 13,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3837355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DustySoul/pseuds/DustySoul
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daredevil gets buried alive. </p><p>The horrible and random demise of a civilian effects Nat and Clint. They’re going to waste time digging up this day old grave - just like the mice in this little game knew they would. They don’t actually expect the man to be alive.</p><p>Matt Murdock has to pull through, somehow, and protect his identity (both of them) while he tries to make his way back to Hell’s Kitchen. At least the journey is easier from Midtown and not a grave.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For this prompt on the kinkmeme  
> http://daredevilkink.dreamwidth.org/725.html?thread=278741#cmt278741

She’s sorry to say they’ve both seen it before. They both know what the circa 7 foot long stretch of disheveled earth means. She wonders if Clint can tell how many hours old it is. (It’s a little over a day, saturated by that morning’s thunderstorm.)

She, normally masked in eloquence, can’t think of what to say.

Clint clears his throat, “Don’t ever tell Kate about this one.”

“Of course not.” Natasha agrees. She can hear him fading away, the small, easy affection in his tone replaced with one of sorrow. His words echo with emptiness.

She abandons the unmarked grave, searches nearby for a shovel. (Is it carelessness that she finds one? Maybe. Maybe no one thought it would matter.)

“I want to see a body,” she declares.

The statement doesn’t draw a reaction from Clint. Though once she breaks the earth he does come and help.

There’s nothing they can do to change the situation. The body they’re going to dig up will either be alive or it won’t. (And Natasha knows the odds, knows how many hours of air a coffin holds. It _won’t_.) But there’s nothing else they can do.

\--

His hands and ankles are zip tied, his hands behind him, straining his shoulders. Wherever he is, it’s small and cramped and silent. He tries to wiggle loose anyway, only to crash against the sides of the…

Far away and above him is the sound of rain on the earth—dirt and grass for as far as he can hear.

… _Coffin_.

No one is looking for him. He has faith the Russians didn’t leave any kind of trail. Not for Claire or Foggy or Karen. Not for the police. He was an annoyance, a distraction, a nuisance, finally taken care of.

He does the only thing he can do, meditates. Even if he knows all it will do is prolong the inevitable.

\--

It starts raining again and the sides of their hole, now five feet deep, threaten to cave in.

\--

His lungs burn. His face feels hot where he’s breathing in his recycled breath over and over again. Everywhere else is cold. He tries to extend his senses, only to find he can’t feel past his own body. To find that he can’t even feel large parts of his own body. His awareness of his limbs even existing is gone, it’s like his legs just aren’t there. He tries to kick out, to ram them against the side of the coffin, and he can’t tell if he succeeds. There’s no pressure, no sensation of a collision. And his ears are ringing so badly he can’t tell if it made a thud.

What he can sense, mostly his neck and chest, is cold, stiff, useless.

 _This is dying_ , he thinks to himself, over and over again. And it’s almost a meditation. And somehow it’s keeping him from hyperventilating - from using up the last little bit of oxygen he’s got.

\--

“Nat…”

“Dig.” _I am not going to let you blame yourself for this until we know for a fact this isn’t some trick, that the grave is not empty._

\--

It’s impossible not to hyperventilate at the last moment, not to be aware. His head pounds, his heart feels like it’s going to explode. His lungs, despite them working overtime, seem empty and hollow, like a vacuum. And that’s all the sensation he has. When he’s used to a whole world of balance and spacial awareness, of being able to sense direction and temperature and air currents…

It’s like the spins. It’s so much worse than the spins.

It’s so much worse than being blinded, those last few moments of the world, his dad’s face, fading away into nothingness. It’s not one sense that’s gone but all of them, all at once.

His face, which was so hot before, doesn’t register any temperature at all. Any sensation of his body, of having a body, is gone. He could be a brain in a vat and he wouldn’t know the difference. He can’t feel the silk lining the coffin. He can’t hear his own breath racing in and out of him. He can only feel his heartbeat, feel the pounding, the rushing of it and the desperate, _desperate_ need for air.

\--

And then it’s whooshing into his lungs like a miracle. And he takes great mouthfuls of it, panting, choking, crying.

 


	2. Chapter 2

He can hear the squeak of a wheel—a…gurney—before he can feel his body moving through space and hear the slightly elevated heart rates of the people pulling him. There are two others behind him, walking and breathing in sync.

He turns his head, choking out the grit and dirt caking the inside of his mouth.

“You’re safe.” A woman’s voice says, calm, collected. She doesn’t miss a beat. “You’re in Avengers Tower.”

Avengers—he reaches up to his face, his hands stiff and fumbling. His fingers still feel cold. But his mask is in place. He lets out a long sigh, not realizing he’d held his breath. It causes him to cough again.

They come to a stop. “We’d like to move you to this bed,” one of the gurney pullers says.

After a slightly awkward silence he understands, “Oh, sorry, yes.” And he’s efficiently transferred from the one set of rough cotton sheets to another. He struggles to sit up.

They give him space, the gurney pullers wandering into a separate room entirely. The two others stand at the foot of the bed.

He coughs, his head spins.

“Relax,” the woman says again.

He shakes his head minutely, “N-no I—don’t want to be here.”

“You’re safe.”

He shakes his head again.

The gathered must share a look.

“Can you tell us what happened?” The woman asks, in a calculatedly neutral voice, her heartbeat slowing a couple of bpm.

He can, he remembers, of course he remembers. But every time he opens his mouth he starts to gag, even after he’s spit up what seems to be a good amount of dirt. His breaths are coming fast and sharp and sound ragged and desperate in his ears.

“Easy, man,” a new voice says, a man’s. “You don’t got to tell us anything.”

“I want to leave.” He can hear the fear in his own voice and almost cringes at it. He tries to swallow back panic, counts his breaths, and tries not to think of how he’s never felt so vulnerable or exposed. But the thing is, he’s stuck here. Even if these people (can he really believe they’re the Avengers?) were willing to just… let him go, he doesn’t have the energy for it. He wouldn’t be able to focus enough to navigate his way out of this building, or across the New York streets. Not without his cane and at least a couple hours sleep. He stumbles on his breath and bends over into another coughing fit.

“You’re free to leave. We’re not detaining you. Some very bad men got a hold of you. We thought you might need urgent medical care. Or a really good therapist,” the man says. “But you’re free to refuse any of that.”

“I’m fine,” he insists.

They must share another look. He’s trying not to make any expressions, gritting his teeth so hard his jaw aches.

“I’m Natasha Romanoff, this is Clint Barton. Maybe we should have led with that.”

“I—I know who you are.” He says. (And okay, he didn’t. But if he hadn’t been...been...barely an hour ago he would have been able to figure out it.)

“We’re not going to hurt you.”

“I don’t want to be here.”

“Do you want us to take you to a regular hospital?” The man cuts in, “Because trust me, we have much better chicken broth than them.”

He smiles at that. It probably seems more like a grimace. His thoughts race. If he asks to go home they’ll ask him where he lives and probably insist on taking him there themselves. If he asks to just up and leave they’ll try to drill him about what happened. If he stays, the first medical exam will probably involve taking off the mask. And the fact that he doesn’t really know what’s going on, how the hell they found him, is really starting to freak him out. Well, freak him out worse than he already is.

“What do you want from me?”

“To make sure you’re okay,” the man says.

“I’m fine.”

“You breathed in a lot of dirt.” The woman speaks with just the barest hint of skepticism.

He wants to snap, to scream, to bolt. Something. The fact that throughout this entire exchange neither of their heart rates have fluctuated is starting to get to him, to make him feel cornered as their rhythm contrasts his own erratic one. “How did you find me?” he finally spits, telling himself over and over again that he’s safe and that these people aren’t going to hurt him. He finds he doesn’t really believe it, though.

There’s a silence, probably a “what do you think we should tell him?” eye contact conversation.  He holds back a snarl, tries to keep his nose from wrinkling.

“A group of people we’ve been tracking were trying to distract us, through us off the main scent. They told us that someone was going to die if we didn’t act fast or smart enough.”

“They led you to me?”

“Yes, and I think you should rest,” the man says, “You’re shaking.”

“I won’t wake up with an IV in my arm, will I?”

“No, pinky promise.”

Matt flops back on the bed instead of reaching out his hand. Doing something as delicate as maneuvering his fingers feels impossible right now.

“And I can leave when I wake up?”

“Sure, but you can also shower, eat, and then leave.”

“I’ll think about it,” he says dryly, dozing off as soon as he hears the door close behind them.


	3. Chapter 3

Someone comes to check in on him. When the probably-a-doctor lets go of his wrist, reaches for something in his lab coat, and moves up further along the bed Matt hisses, “Don’t.”

“I just want to check your vitals.”

“No.”

“Sir—” The probably-a-doctor sounds exasperated.

“Clint will be very frustrated if someone makes a liar out of him.”

“I’m not going to give you an IV, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“It’s _not_. And if you don’t leave me to rest I’m going to get up and walk right out of the building even if I’m not in a state to do so.” As threats go…it’s not the best. But the probably-a-doctor retreats, grumbling, so at least it’s effective.

 

Clint comes to check on him once he’s woken up properly. “If we tell you enough times, are you going to believe us when we say this isn’t a war zone?”

He hauls himself out of bed, and chuckles, “No. Absolutely not.” He leans against the side of the bed. “Tell me about the security. Who monitors the cameras, is the footage stored, that kind of thing.”

“JARVIS, the AI that runs this building, he has cameras, motion detectors, whole kit and caboodle basically everywhere. He monitors them and the data all has different protocols.”

“This building has an AI?”

“Yeah. He can actually show you around and stuff if being around others is setting you on edge.”

“He’ll answer my questions?”

“Yes.”

“Then, please, no offense, but I _really_ don’t want the company.”

“No hard feelings, leave whenever. And, if you find you can tell us anything about what happened feel free to tell JARVIS, he’ll relay the message.”

He nods and listens to Clint’s footsteps fade. He ducks his head and concentrates on the heartbeats in the area around him.

“JARVIS?” he asks.

“Yes, sir,” a robotic voice replies with a slight British accent. It’s much more…realistic and easier to understand than any computer generated voice he’s ever heard. He jumps because it sounds so human.

“How many people are in this part of the building?”

JARVIS gives him a number that matches the heartbeats.

“Um, thanks." He sucks in a deep breath then blurts out, "What do you know about me?”

JARVIS rattles off height, estimated weight, the things Natasha and Clint have calculated (like how long he was buried alive), confirmed, and questioned about him. It’s not a lot. But it lets him know that they think he's just some random guy who just happened to get stuck in the crossfire. There’s also nothing about him being blind, which is a blessing, both because he’s in his vigilante gear and because the number of blind men of his description is…well. It could be worse and it could be better. But he doesn’t have to worry about being tacked, at least not that way.

He clears his throat. “What’s the surveillance like in the bathrooms?”

“Limited motion detectors and audio, no visual.” Imagining what an AI must experience reminds Matt quite a bit of his own world on fire.

“So where’s the nearest one of those? I’d like a shower.”

JARVIS gives him directions then says, “Shall I send up a change of clothes?”

And he has to think about that. There could be trackers in them. And he doesn’t have a wallet or any money on him, just the burner phone, since no one emptied his pockets. But then, if he had what he was wearing washed it could be returned with trackers. At least he’d look a little more normal on the streets with whatever was presented to him. Probably. “Sure. And a pair of dark sunglasses, please,” he finally agrees, mentally crossing his fingers that it’s not raining today. And that there’s a window, somewhere, for him to figure out that it’s not raining.

Fuck it. He pushes off the bed, stumbling through the directions he’s been given.

 

“Can you lie to me?” he asks JARVIS once he’s settled in the shower, lathering a washcloth with the thankfully generic and mostly scentless soap the bathroom is stocked with.

“If I desired to or felt it was pertinent to the safety of the Avengers.”

“Isn’t that the same thing?” he smiles.

“I suppose so. You seem much more at ease.”

“I don’t like knowing people are looking at me, it freaks me out,” which is basically true.

“Noted.”

“Will I actually be able to get out of here without anyone else trying to talk to me?”

“Yes.”

“I’m not sure what’s going on.”

“Natasha and Clint were on a classified mission. They found you and brought you back here for your safety.”

“‘My safety?’”

“In case you need urgent medical attention.”

“And now they’re just going to let me go.”

“As they said earlier, sir, you’re not being detained.”

“Without even forcing a medical exam?” He still wouldn’t be up to fighting his way out, but navigating without his cane seemed doable. There was just…still…they went through all the trouble to…it’s hard not to think ‘abduct him’ but there it is. They went through all that trouble and they’re just going to let him leave? It doesn’t seem likely.

“No one in the tower thinks forced medical exams are a good idea. I can assure you that the care here is state of the art and that no one will proceed in any treatment without your freely given consent.”

“And I can just leave?” His voice echoes off the tiles with disbelief and incredulity. It’s impossible to know what time it is, or how much time has passed…but it’s probably been less than a day since he was…and now he’s just—it’s just—that’s it? It’s that simple?

“You seem stuck on this line of questioning.”

“I—” His eyes start to burn, “I don’t believe that you’ll just let me go. That it'll be easy.”

“You do not seem to be processing events, but I assure you that you can walk out this building and go home. No one will stop you, no one will question you. Most likely no one will even look at you twice. You’ve found yourself in a strange and new environment after a highly traumatic event. It is natural that you should feel frightened or angry or confused.”

Matt takes a deep breath, the panic which was starting the flare up again edges away.

“Your clothes are here, sir.” JARVIS informs him.

“Thank you,” Matt replies, clearing his throat. He washes himself one last time, just to make sure he didn’t miss a spot. Walking out of the bathroom having missed some mud or blood would probably give him away.

After he’s dried, he strategically pulls the bundle outside the door into the room without anything more than his arm being visible in the hall. He locks the door again and runs his hands over the clothes. Jeans and a cotton T-shirt, no graphic that he can feel. Flannel boxers, cotton socks.

The glasses he requested are large and bulky and wrap around the side of his face, to his ears, completely. He has no way to test if they are sunglasses so he just has to trust.

“Would you like a backpack so you can carry your old clothes with you? Or, if you’d like to stay a little longer I can have them laundered as well.”

“A backpack would be nice.”

“Very good, sir. It will be here shortly.”

Matt listens to the hallway while he dresses. Someone drops something outside his door and leaves.

He pulls the new bundle in the same way he did the last one. He finds a water bottle and a box of granola bars already inside. He packs up his clothes and swings the backpack over his shoulders.

_Alright. Time to go out there and pretend that I'm not a terrified, disoriented blind man._

_God, I miss my cane._

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

He walks until his senses are screaming and he can’t separate the mass of heartbeats, the flutter of air currents, the steady changes in temperature, in the people around him. He hasn’t gone nearly as far as he wants to, but he can feel his heart pounding against his chest and bile burning at the back of his throat. And if by some miracle he has managed to ditch his tail—or they really didn’t send anyone after him in the first place—he’s going to ruin all that by making a spectacle if he doesn’t stop wandering around senselessly right this minute.

He ducks into a little diner to catch his breath. The smell of cheap over-roasted coffee burns his nose.

“Can I get you anything?” Someone asks him.

“What’s the address for this building? I’m a little lost, need to phone a friend.”

She tells him.

“Thank you, that’s all.”

He pulls out the burner and calls Claire.

She picks up on the first ring.

“Matt, what’s wrong?”

Hearing her voice steadies him. “Can you—can you—pick me up. Please?” His voice cracks on the last word and he clears his throat, suddenly dry.

“Where are you?”

He tells her. “I can pay for gas. I just don’t have any money on me right now.” He steadies his breathing again, “Can’t call a taxi.”

“Wait, are you even hurt?”

“I—Claire—” He takes a deep breath, “If you can’t—” His eyes burn. He actually doesn’t know what he’s going to do if she can’t. He could call Foggy, try to bullshit his way through explaining how he ended up in Midtown at- what time was it?

The door opens with a tingle and the rush of noise from the sidewalk batters against him and Matt realizes that he really can’t call Foggy. He can’t hold himself together much longer and definitely not with Foggy so close to him, the familiar cadence of his voice and the warming layers of his scent… no. If Foggy was here right now—he can’t. Couldn’t. Wouldn’t.

“Matt? Matt are you still with me?”

“Yes. I-I-I’m here. Ca-can-can-…?”

“Yes, god, I’ll pick you up. I’m coming. What happened?”

“I-I-Claire, what’s-what’s?”

“Just take a deep breath. Do your meditating thing. Listen, my ETA is about half an hour, can you hold out until then?”

“Yes.”

“Alright, I’m trusting you on that.” Her sigh crackles over the line, “I don’t have the minutes to stay on with you for the entire time, okay? But if you need to get to someplace with less people you should walk to Central Park and call me again from there. Okay?”

“Okay.” He agrees. He takes a deep breath. He can do this. He lets the air whoosh out of him, slowly. He can do this. He can do this. And he meditates, standing off to the side of this cramped little diner, focusing on his breath, trying not to think about not having enough air.

 

“Matt?” Claire whispers.

Matt startles, tries to focus on her, her scent, her breathing, her hand held out, ready to steady him. “Claire,” he rasps.

“Matt, can I lead you?”

It takes a moment for her words to break through the haze in his mind. He offers his arm to her in answer. He doesn’t remember the walk to her car, except as an awareness of the world he was trying to block out booming with sound and scent and sensation. In the onslaught he feels sluggish, defenseless, _blind._ He still can’t make sense of the rush. What was, less than a day ago, too little sensation has turned into too much. The juxtaposition makes his chest clench.

“Breathe, breathe. Matt! Matt! Breathe,” Claire is chanting in his ear.

He sucks in a breath.

“We’re here. Okay, Matt, we’re here.” She opens the car and helps him into the back seat. He lies back gratefully. The dark, unyielding world spins. He can feel the engine come to life.

“You can pass out now, by the way,” Claire tells him.

He huffs out a laugh and gives into the darkness with a sigh.

 

He wakes up, gasping for breath, on Claire’s sofa.

She shushes him, pets his hair, and once he’s no longer hyperventilating she says, “Just like old times.”

He chuckles weakly, and it turns into a cough.

“Do you want to tell me what happened?” she says, serious.

He opens his mouth. Closes it. Clears his throat.

“You don’t have any injuries, least not that I can find.” She starts running her hands through his curls again.

“Got—got drugged. Then buried alive.”  

Her hands still—heartbeat spiking at his words. She turns her head away from him.  ( _It’s nice to have this world on fire back._ ) He focuses on her completely, avoiding the panic still curling around his heart.

“Yikes,” she says, her tone even not betraying the uneven rhythm behind it.

“That’s about the size of it,” he agrees, letting out a shaking exhale.

“What do you need?” she asks, words filled with compassion.

Damn it. It stings, that it’s not the suffocating, or waking up in a strange place surrounded by potential hostiles, or even getting half lost wandering around New York with his senses fractured, but Claire’s gentle tones and caring words that finally break him. He’s crying and he can’t stop. He reaches for her forearms, before he loses his focus and his world shatters again.

And it’s just his rapid, shallow breathing, the pounding in his head, the tear tracks down his face, and Claire’s skin underneath is fingertips.

She tries to hold him, coos at him, shushes him. It barely registers.

“Matt, Matt, I’d like to move you, okay? Don’t flail.”

He nods, jerkily, stiff and uncoordinated in his distress. She taps at his hands, still curled around her arms, vice like. He moves them up her body until he has them curled over her shoulders.

She shoves her arms under his body, one under his knees, the other pressing up on his back. He complies, folds into himself, and is carried.

It is stilling, calming, and the desperate choking sobs start to fade away. It is also, in its own small way, terrifying to react this way while so helpless. She lays him out on her bed.

The sheets are flannel, course, but warm. And they don’t matter, not when he’s struggling to breathe. The bed dips where Claire crawls in next to him.

“Deep breath, Matt,” she tells him. “Come on, breathe with me.”

He tries. He curls into her, listening, feeling, smelling her. Breathing.

“Good. Shhh, shhh, it’s okay. It’s okay. You’re here. You’re with me.” She rubs circles on his back. “Everything’s going to be okay. _Shhhhhhh_.”

He stills, eventually, the panic and fear, the desperation, fading away—replaced with numbness.

He’s able to process his senses again, though he feels removed from it all.

Claire rolls him over so she’s spooning him. Her breath is steady against his back and it’s getting easier to keep his own breathing even. Her exhales are warm against the shell of his ear and she engulfs him in her arms. “You’re going to be okay.”

“Yeah?” the word trembles.

“Yeah. You’ve been hit worse, right?”

“Yeah.”

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

The morning after isn’t awkward, which is a godsend. Claire’s placed a glass of water by his side of the bed and he downs it eagerly, realizing just how long it’s been since he’s had anything to drink.

He can smell her in the kitchen, cooking. (Some sort of stew. Spices, black beans, turkey.)

“Can I borrow one of your shirts?” he calls.

“Sure.”

He pulls off the unfamiliar T-shirt and digs through her drawers looking for anything not made of cotton. He finds an athletic shirt made out of a similar material to his man in the mask gear. He pulls it on and walks into the kitchen.

“That shirt’s pink you know.”

“Well, real men wear pink.”

She lets out an amused breath.

“Do you cook for all the men who spend the night?” he asks, warmed by her humor.

“Only the cute ones I drag out of dumpsters.”

He walks over to her, tentatively pressing against her back, wrapping his arms around her waist, “Is this okay?” he whispers against her neck.

“You’re fine.” Her voice catches, just a little bit.

He doesn’t say anything, just nestles his nose against her neck, breathing deep and slow, memorizing her scent. (The specific tang of her sweat, the faint burn of hand sanitizer, the chemical smell of her hospital’s scentless soap, the imitation lime of her shampoo which almost smells like the real thing.)

She rocks back and forth in the circle of his arms while she works.

“You seem…better. Did you sleep well?”

He shrugs, “No nightmares.”

“You want to say something,” he says after listening to her breathing pick up then slow down a couple of times.

“I’m…just worried about you.”

“I can handle myself,” he says evenly.

“God, you don’t think I know that? It's just…damn, Matt, you were really messed up last night. And now it’s like none of that even happened.”

He ducks his head against her neck. “That’s not—” He heaves out a sigh, “If I was pretending like none of this ever happened, I’d be gone by now, Claire. Not...” _Here, with you_.

She nods, “You’re right.” She fiddles with the stew some more before turning around in his arms, resting her hands against his face. He turns to kiss her palm.

Tears prick at his eyes.

 

 


	6. Chapter 6

Thank god for small mercies, like being kidnapped on weekends.

Matt fiddles with his phone, biting his lip, deciding whether or not to call in sick. In the end he doesn’t, because after all, isn't it best to try and slide back into a routine after things like this? Besides, he wants to hear Foggy’s voice in person, not distorted over the tinny phone speakers. And it has to help, right?

He’s greeted with, “You sleep okay, buddy?” when he walks into the office and it succeeds in putting a smile on his face.

“Yeah, fine, you?”

“Fine.” He hears Foggy’s hand slap against his sides, “But I’m not the one who looks like hell warmed over.”

“Uh, do I…?” Matt rests his cane against the wall.

“Nah! Well, okay, but only a little bit,” and then it’s just like any other Monday, except they get a client.

 

When they’re locking up at the end of the day Foggy says, “Let’s get a drink, to celebrate!”

Matt considers refusing. He’s tired, his body aches and his hands have started to tremble. But it’s Foggy and Foggy’s a talkative, expansive drunk. It would be nice to relax in his company.

“Sure,” he says and can tell from the noise Foggy makes that he’s just punched the air.

Matt smiles.

“What about you, Karen?”

“Oh, I’d love to but I shouldn’t. You two have fun.”

“Ah, well, we’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Good night Karen,” Matt says as he steps out the door.

 

They go to Josie's. It’s as familiar to Matt as the back of his hand; the hints of cigarette smoke, the cocktail scent of different kinds of alcohol, sweat, and the vinegar solution they use to scrub down the bar.

He closes his eyes as Foggy leads him. (It doesn’t change anything, of course, but it’s nice. It’s like leaning into his friend. It’s a…comfort.)

A bell chimes as he’s led inside.

Foggy orders for them both and once they’ve both taken a swig of beer he says, “I didn’t want to ask in front of Karen, but what’s up?”

“Hmm?”

“With the zombie impression. You just seemed really out of it today. So what’s troubling you?”

Matt takes a big swallow of beer. It burns going down. He mulls over his words. “You wouldn’t regret signing on with me if I said I was worried about the firm?”

“Nah, of course not.”

And it’s reassuring to hear Foggy’s heart as steady as a horse. “‘Cause I just… I’m just trying my best to do the right thing.”

“That’s Matthew Murdock for you.”

Matt laughs.

“So what, you don’t think we’re helping enough people, the right people?”

“I just—I worry about it, you know? Now that this is meant to be an actual, paying job…It just-it—”

“Seems so much more impossible, you know, since we’re not in grad school?” Foggy suggests.

Matt chuckles, “Yeah. I just…can you even make a livelihood, in this profession, by doing the right thing?”

“Well, let’s find out together.” Foggy says, “Here, toast.”

Matt holds up his bottle.

Foggy clinks them together and says, “Nelson and Murdock.”

“Nelson and Murdock” Matt echoes, and drains the last of the beer.

 

 


	7. Chapter 7

And life…goes on. Sure, he has another night terror in his usual round up and a new dislike for the moments right after waking when his “world on fire” hasn’t started to burn…But he still goes to work every morning and out patrolling each night. He does casework. He stops random would-be muggers and rapists. He threatens a few abusers. He, occasionally, goes out with Foggy and Karen for a drink.

It looks like life is going to keep on going like he hadn’t been buried alive until a Russian gang from a different part of New York pulls into Hell’s Kitchen giving a rough ride to someone in the trunk.

It’s been a relatively slow night and there’s enough organized crime in this area for Matt’s taste, so he’s going to deter this new group from getting cozy with the area’s crime lords.

Taking them out is routine, things go awry when he jimmies open the trunk and is greeted with, “Hey, thanks. Um, no need for a hospital,” and a scent (under that of blood) that he can place. The man from Avengers tower, Clint Barton.

“Uh-huh” Matt says, giving the guy a hand and hauling him out of the trunk. He can hear several of the guy’s ribs grinding together, though not well enough to assess the damage.

“Your Avenger friends going to be able to patch you up?”

“Sure,” he says, all bravado until, “Just…as soon as I get back to the tower.”

“They don’t know you’re out here?”

“Yes, they do…I mean, no, they don’t. I mean, I kind of live nearby.”

“So you don’t live in Avengers Tower?”

“Sometimes, but mostly no. I kind of…own this apartment building in Red Hook. I live there.”

“So I’ll just, um—” He pulls something from his pocket. "Well, that's...unfortunate."

Matt reaches out to grab the thing in his hands. It's a very thoroughly crushed flip phone.  “Uh-huh.” He hands it back.

“Okay, you do not have a leg to stand on!” Clint snaps. “You were in way worse shape when we rescued you, okay? So I’ll figure something out. No hospitals.”

“It’s fine,” Matt chuckles, “I wasn’t going to...” He considers telling Clint about Claire. “So what’s your plan now?”

Clint rummages in his pockets, comes up with some coins. “There a payphone around here?”

Matt gestures, “This way.”

Clint matches step beside him. “So, do you do the—um—superhero thing a lot?”

Matt shrugs, “I don’t think I’d call it a superhero thing.”

“What then?”

“Masked vigilante thing.”

“Alright, you do the ‘masked vigilante thing’ a lot?”

“Sure.”

“You got any superpowers?”

“Why do you think it’s called ‘masked vigilante’ and not ‘superhero’?”

“Ah, angst, morality, that kind of thing. But hey, us superheroes got all that too. No need to stereotype, man.”

“Well what’s your superpower, then?”

“…I am fantastic with a bow.”

“No super strength? Speed?…Exaggerated healing?”

“…No. Okay, but—”

“You’re a superhero without any superpowers?”

“…Basically. But that doesn’t stop me from pulling my weight on the team.”

“I don’t doubt that. Besides, it’s not like with your face on the news you could be anything else. We’re here.”

Clint steps into the phone booth.

“I’m going to head back out there, you’ll be alright from here?” Matt asks.

“Right as rain.”

“Goodnight, then.”

“‘Night.”

 

And, okay, so that wasn’t all that out of the ordinary, but it didn’t stop at Clint.

He tracked down his next informant who might have information on Fisk…only to find he’d already been captured and was being tortured by Natasha.

“I’ll need him when you’re done,” he announces.

“Don’t worry, I won’t kill him,” she assures him. “I’ll just soften him up.”

When Matt settles in a few yards away she says, “What, you think this is a show?”

He laughs and shrugs, knowing she raised an eyebrow, maybe quirked her lips. (He wonders, what kind of face does she have? What does that expression look like on her?)

She goes back to her gruesome work. He listens to the man’s heartbeat, wondering what cues Natasha picks up on. She must be good at this, she must know how to read people.

When she’s wrapping up she whispers one last question. He doesn’t hear it, but he does her the man’s heartbeat pound as he lies through his teeth.

It satisfies her and she stands up, steps back.

Matt rises and states, “He’s lying.” And the man panics, his heartbeat erratic.

Natasha whirls to face him, then back to the man. Her own rhythm has tripped but she’s regained control. She strides over to the man, purpose in every faint slap of her boots against the concrete.

He’s screaming now, trying to flail himself loose from his bounds.

“Do you want to change your answer?” Natasha asks, threat oozing from every syllable.

The man babbles at her. All Matt listens to is ‘is it the truth’. (It is.)

“Your turn, buckaroo,” she says once satisfied, settling herself in to watch.

The man doesn’t lie to him. Matt doesn’t need him to, confident in the tells he’s already heard.

“Was there anything specific you wanted to do to him after?” he asks Natasha.

“Nope, he’s all yours.”

“I’m just going to leave him here. His friends should find him soon enough.”

They walk out of the abandoned building together.

“So how did you know?” Natasha asks.

“Hmm?” Matt says, mulling over his own set of information and revelations.

“That he was lying. It’s very rare for me to not be able to tell.”

“Were you giving him the benefit of the doubt?”

“It was a gamble, yes,” Natasha confirms. “So, how did you know?”

“I thought I was allowed secrets.”

“I—do you understand what a big deal this is? To me?”

Matt has to shrug.

“I’m a spy. Deception, and not being deceived, is my profession. It's-It's more than my _profession_. And sometimes that means you have to bet. But you just… _knew_. That wasn’t a case where you could just do that. So, how did you know?”

“It might not be perfect,” Matt admits. “But I haven’t been wrong yet.”

Natasha’s heartbeat spikes at that, then quickly levels out. (She’d be terrible to play lie detection with.) “I see. Well, I do hope I run into you again. You’ve been very helpful.”

“I do my best,” he says evenly. They part ways once they get to a main road. Matt pays close attention to make sure he’s not followed.

 

 


	8. Chapter 8

He can tell, from then on, when Clint is in Hell’s Kitchen. And he knows more than half the time when Natasha’s there, but whenever he senses Natasha’s presence it’s probably because she lets him. On slow nights he tails them, pulling Clint out of a few more scrapes.

“Thanks, I can usually hand those tracksuits. Just-thanks.”

“No problem.”

He plays lie detector for Natasha a couple more times, curled up in the shadows. She always knows where he is, though, and waves goodbye.

 

Things change when he shows up at Claire’s with some busted ribs and a gash that desperately needs some stitching, only to find that her sofa’s already taken. Clint’s unconscious or sleeping, still breathing, with a steady heartbeat.

“Where’d you find him?”

“Same dumpster I found you. Why, you know him?”

“I do, actually. He dug up the grave.”

“Yeah,” she exhales with a soft sound.

“Over there,” she points to the armchair. “I’ll patch you up.”

Clint stirs as Claire’s stitching him and almost falls off the couch with a groan.

“Easy there,” Claire assures him, “You took quite the hit.”

“No hospital.” He groans.

“Everyone’s a critic,” Claire sighs, “No hospital. Didn’t call the police. Just don’t reopen your stitches and we’ll all be fine.”

“Where—”

“My apartment, I’m a nurse. No hospital, the rest doesn’t matter.”

Clint coughs, “You do this often?” he asks.

“Patch up the local superheroes who end up in my dumpster? Actually, yes. It’s probably not very good for my health, but I manage.”

Clint says, “You shouldn’t- I could be a serial killer.”

“Well,” trust me, you’re not hurting a fly with those injuries.”

He looks at her again, and Matt’s smiling so hard his face hurts. Claire pats his cheek.

“The last guy could’ve been a serial killer.”

“He was in worse shape than you. I can’t believe you’re actually arguing with me for probably saving your life. Also, what’s with the Russians using my dumpster for a mortuary?”

“I don’t—you don’t make sense.” Clint’s voice gets louder but without any trace of panic. (And his heartbeat doesn’t change rhythm.)

“That’s probably true. I mean, I spend my day job in the ER, processing all kinds of people. The worse are the ungrateful drunks. I get yelled at, cursed at, shit on, the whole shebang. Only to come home and instead of kicking back and watching cable I patch up vigilantes who can’t even manage a ‘thank you’.”

“Thank you.” Clint and Matt say in unison, Clint sounding considerably more confused. His heartbeat spikes but quickly levels out at Matt’s words.

“That’s more like it,” Claire says.

Once Claire’s patched Matt up and gone to get Clint something to eat Matt limps over to the sofa, coming to sit by it.

“Sorry I couldn’t save your ass tonight.”

“’S fine.”

“Can I?” Matt hovers a hand over Clint’s face.

“Sure. Though she said not to poke my bruises when I first got here. At least I think that’s what she said.”

“I won’t poke.” Matt promises, ghosting his fingertips over the area around Clint’s eyes. They’re both so swollen that it’s amazing he can see right now (if he can see right now). “Did you get punched or is this from a head injury?”

“Punched? Yeah, punched,” Clint assures, groaning and wiggling to get comfortable. It’s one of those moments Matt wishes he could exchange a look. Specifically one with Claire that says, ‘are you sure this guy’s okay?’ “It feels like everything hurts.”

“I know what you mean.”

“S’ whad’er ya in fer?”

“Get my ribs wrapped, couple of stitches.”

“If you say, ‘No big,’” Claire calls, “Next time I’ll disinfect your cuts using bleach.”

Matt cringes, Clint lets out a confused, but amused, huff of air.

“So she’s like, your sure thing,” Clint asks, he starts out whispering it almost conspiratorially but looses volume control at the end.

Claire bangs some pots around in the kitchen, displeased.

Matt flicks the bruised skin around Clint’s eye. (He’s being careful.)

“Hey,” Clint squawks, trying to maneuver away from his finger, “No poking! No poking!”

“I’m not poking,” Matt says, though he stops terrorizing his fellow vigilante. Superhero. Whatever.

Claire hands him a bowl of soup, sets one on the side table pulled up beside Clint’s head.

“You’re going to be the death of me,” she says.

“I hope not,” Matt replies, earnest. And okay, so it sounds a bit like _I love you_ but that’s not his fault.

Clint makes gagging noises. Once Matt’s established that he’s not actually gagging on anything he says, “You know, Claire could have made you soup from a can. And, let me tell you, her homemade stuff is definitely better than anything at Avengers Tower.”

Clint huffs, maneuvering himself into superior soup eating position and is silent. Once he’s gotten through about half of it he whispers, “Thank you.”

They finish the rest of the meal in silence.

“You’re free to leave or sleep in the armchair,” Claire tells Matt once she’s cleaned up the dishes.

Matt weighs the trek back to his apartment versus the aches and pains of sleeping in a chair. If Clint weren’t here he’d joke, “Not in your bed?” But if Clint weren’t here he’d be guaranteed the sofa, so.

“I think I’ll stay. Though I might leave in the middle of the night.”

“Okay. If you’re here in the morning I don’t suppose you could make breakfast?”

“Sure,” Matt agrees.

“Goodnight.”

“Goodnight.”

After Matt settles down in the arm chair in a light doze he hears Clint say, “T’mata fru’ salad’s just salsa.” And then he breaks down into hysterical giggles.

Inwardly, so as not to encourage him, Matt groans.

 

The next morning is mostly uneventful. Clint is completely silent, probably expressing himself mostly through gestures and facial expressions Matt can’t see. He makes scrambled eggs, pretending he’s watching what he’s doing as Clint hobbles around the apartment.

Claire’s dressed in her scrubs. “Cool,” she says to Clint, “You didn’t die on my sofa in the middle of the night.” She scarfs down her serving of eggs and says, “You lot, clear out by the time I get back from my shift,” before heading out.

Matt cleans up, Clint helps, and then Matt sets about leaving. He presses his hand against the glass of the east facing window, and it’s still cold. So he decides to return to his apartment via the roof.

Clint tracks down his cellphone, not broken this time, and heads out as well. They part ways in the hall, Matt going up, Clint going down.

 

 


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I should warn for this scene that Matt is implied to have just been tortured. Compared to the being buried alive thing it's not that big a deal. Just some 1-2 degree electrical burns.

Matt wakes up. The world is distorted by gusts of wind he can’t make sense of and a loud, droning, rhythmic sound. The surface is soft underneath him and he can’t sense. Some drug easing his pain and clouding his world. He wouldn’t be able to understand his sensory input anyway. All in all it’s an improvement over the last place he’d been conscious, a gritty, abandoned warehouse with rats chattering in the shadows. Before he can assess his surroundings he’s pulled back into unawareness.

 

When he comes to for the second time he is overwhelmed with the sensation of flying through the air. He’s assaulted by the sound again. (Helicopter.) He fumbles to touch his face and head. The mask is still in place and someone maneuvers a headset on him. He fumbles with it, trying to help, until the roar all around him is dimmed.

“Good morning, sunshine,” Natasha greets him.

“What happened?”

“I don’t know, we were hoping you could tell us.”

He groans.

“We’re taking you back to the tower, you probably need medical attention.”

“Yeah,” Matt agrees, running his tongue over the inside of his mouth (wet, copper). “There was electricity.”

“That could do serious damage to your heart. We have a medic on board, can she give you a once over?”

“For injuries, not vitals.”

“Sure thing.”

And then an unfamiliar pair of hands are patting across his body, exploring for injury. The doctor palpates his abdomen. He breaths in and out when she rests her hands over the sides of his rib cage. She runs the sides of her hands across his sternum. When she reaches his head she says, “Can I check your ears for spinal fluid?”

“Nope.”

“Can I take your pulse and breaths per minute?”

He debates, wondering how obvious it is by now that he’s not going to let anyone take the mask off him. “Yeah.”

She holds his wrist, fingers pressed into the pulse. “You’ve got some electrical burns.” She says, placing his wrist back down by his sides. “On your hands and lower legs. May I treat them?”

“Yeah.”

“These aren’t going to scar much,” she tells him. “And the ones on your hands will be gone in a few days. You’re looking at a week or two for everything else.” She cuts off parts of his clothes to get to the burns and wraps gauze around them.

Matt falls asleep before they touch down on Avengers Tower.

 

This time when he wakes he’s in a bed. JARVIS greets him. “Good morning, sir. It is 9:34 in the afternoon. You are in the medical ward in Avengers Tower. You do not have an IV drip, though it was recommended you drink some water and electrolytes as soon as possible. There are two water bottles to your right.”

“Thank you.” Matt says, struggling to sit up and reach for them.

“If you would like to change clothes there is a clean set in the nearest wash room. Also in that washroom is a bottle of aloe vera gel, that and a topical antibacterial ointment on the affected areas are the suggested treatment.”

“Which way?” Matt hauls himself out of the bed. He goes through a very similar routine to the last time he was here.

While he's dressing JARVIS announces, “Agent Barton would like to let you know that the rest of the Avengers are eating brunch in the common kitchen if you would like to join them.”

Matt exhales, processing this.

“Sir?”

“I need to think.” He runs his hands through his hair. He doesn’t have his cane because his cane would be a dead giveaway. Superheroes probably don’t wear their costumes while relaxing in their house…tower…yeah. Which means, again, he’d need glasses. The idea, of taking off the mask and being… Not Matt Murdock, blind lawyer but just some… other person. The man behind the mask, a man no one would think is really him.

“I’ll…” he starts, then clears his throat, “I’ll just say hello.” It might be important for him to recognize the other Avengers by voice and smell like he can Clint and Natasha.

“I’ll let them know.” JARVIS replies.

 

He can’t really tell if anyone acknowledges him when he walks into the dining area. The smell of curry, thick layers of spices he can’t name, is calming. They’ve left a seat open for him, by the door. He takes it, trying not to show how on edge he is.

There are six heartbeats around the table, and Natasha and Clint, to his left, he can recognize by scent. So the four other members of the Avengers, the Hulk, Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America. The two slowest heartbeats are probably either Bruce or Steve. And one heartbeat…just doesn’t sound completely human, which would be Thor’s. And yes…Tony’s is quite distinctive as well. He could probably recognize him by it alone.

“So,” Clint says, “This is the guy we dug out of a grave that one time.”

“I’d rather be known as ‘the guy had your back a _couple_ times.’”

“Mighty warrior you must be indeed,” Thor booms. It’s unsettling.

“I can hold my own,” Matt agrees.

“I’d like to see that,” says someone who’s probably Tony. “Do you spar?”

“No.”

“Then how do you train?” says the second slowest heartbeat.

“Punching bags.”

“Oh, Steve here knows a thing or two about those,” second slowest (Bruce) says.

“I don’t—” Steve trails off.

And okay, he can keep track of them now.

“Are you going to eat anything?” Tony asks.

Matt rolls a fork under his palm. “No,” he decides. “I mostly just want to meet…”

“The Avengers,” supplies Tony.

“The friends of the people I…”

“Somewhat illegally fight crime with?” Clint suggests.

“Yeah, that. So, um. I’ll just,” he stands and heads out.

“You can stay. Um, if you want.” Bruce says. “I had a look at those burns, they’re not going to be fun.”

“No-I should… get back to my, er, regular life. Just…cool. I'll um... be able to recognize you okay now. If any of you get roughed up and left for dead in my part of the city. That's uh-it."

"Considerate,” Tony says.

 

 


	10. Chapter 10

The next time he’s in Avengers Tower it’s because part of Hell’s Kitchen was included in the latest Doombot fiasco and he got invited to the after-party.

“I’m wondering if I should just stash some clothes here so I don’t have to keep borrowing yours,” he says to no one in particular.

“There are enough guest suites that you can have one. Would also mean we could put you someplace other than the medical ward whenever you show up in a helicopter, mostly comatose,” Tony offers.

“I’ll think about it.”

“You should,” Clint agrees. “At this rate you’d get more out of it than me.”

As it stands he doesn’t change into “civvies”, but he’s also not the only one.

 

“I don’t dance,” he’s telling Steve.

“Really?” Steve asks, and there’s some emotion that sounds like amusement but echoes like sadness.

“Really, so I don’t care if she wants to dance with me because I don’t dance.” He probably could dance. It wouldn’t be that different from fighting. But still, Natasha probably only asked him so she’d have a chance to use her espionage superpowers to get him to talk or induce things like where he lives and what he does in that regular life he mentioned last time.

 

He somehow ends up getting roped into dancing with her anyway. He spends the whole time desperately trying not to step on her toes, wishing she would just lead, and painfully aware that Bruce Banner has been facing them with his arms crossed for the entire song.

“You know you're not half bad,” Natasha says. Matt images she’s giving him some sort of look or scan, trying to suss out what all his secrets are. It is more uncomfortable than the glare Bruce probably has directed at him.

“I’m just sorry I held you back, didn’t let any of your obvious skills shine.” He smiles at her, bows a little, and retreats.

 

He takes a breather in an empty hallway.

“JARVIS?”

“Yes, Sir?”

“I just um—”

“Need to not be watched for a while, sir?”

 _You remembered_. “Yeah. Is anyone likely to come this way?”

“Not for some time, no.”

“Thanks. It’s, um, quite the party.”

“It’s what Mr. Stark is known for.”

“Really? I thought he was known for being Iron Man or at the very least nuking the Chitauri.”

“Mr. Stark is a man of many talents,” JARVIS agrees.

“Am I actually in one of your blind spots?”

“No, sir. The only place I do not have full visual range would be in the bathrooms or when deactivated in the living quarters.”

“Hmm.”

“If you like I can direct you to one of the spare living quarters Mr. Stark mentioned to you earlier. You can turn off some surveillance features from there.”

Matt scratches at the side of his mask. He’s worn it for longer while sweatier but it would nice to be able to take it off, even if just for a bit.

“Yeah,” he says. “I’d like that.”

‘Suites’ really did mean…like hotel suites. There’s a kitchenette, a sitting area, and a king sized bed. JARVIS leads him through the process of setting up the security system he wants. Once that’s set Matt takes off the mask, runs his hands through his hair, and washes his face.

Then he lies on the sofa and trades jabs and small talk with the AI until he, without meaning to, falls asleep.

 

“Sir.” JARVIS’ voice wakes him up. “Agents Romanoff and Barton are looking for you. May I share your location with them?”

“Sure.” Matt hauls himself up, feeling unfairly foggy after what should have been a refreshing nap. He rummages around for the (at least now dried though still smelly) mask and puts it back on.

He meets them in the hall where he’d first started conversing with JARVIS.

“Do you ever take that mask off?” Clint asks him.

Matt smiles, “Sure, but only where no one will see me.”

“Ah. So that’s why you needed a secure room.” His tone changes, “Tony thought it was beca—”

“I really do not need to here what Stark thought I was doing, thank you.”

“We just wanted to make sure you didn’t get lost and wander into the wrong R&D department.”  Some small facial expression she is letting him see would let him know if that was a joke or not. Probably.

“Well, I’m fine, I have JARVIS to guide me.”

“Indeed.”

“Tony will be jealous that his AI has found someone else.”

Matt smiles, suddenly feeling very distant. “How many people are left, about?”

“It’s just the Avengers and part of the Tower’s staff. The night’s winding down.”

 

Back in the main room everyone’s milling around in small groups, and yes, there are much fewer heart beats than before.

“So.” Clint says, “How did you get into vigilantedom?”

“Uhh,” His mouth is dry. “It’s kind of… a rough story.”

“Yeah, I should have realized. Most origin stories are like that. You don’t have to answer.”

Matt chuckles. “It’s um. There was just this…incident that couldn’t be solved through the legal system, like these things are supposed to go. I tried that, at first.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, um. There was-um—”

“Hey man, you don’t have to. Don’t feel obligated to.”

Matt licks his lips, draws in a breath, and thinks about that. “I think I want to,” he says.

Clint clasps his shoulder. “Okay.”

“There was this girl, her father was abusing her, sexually. I knew about it. So I called Child Protective Services.” He clears his throat. “Nothing came of it. The mother didn’t listen and the father didn’t leave marks. So, I started following him, learned his schedule. Then, one night when he was at work, I gave him a visit in my—” he gestures at himself.

“Not quite a costume?”

“Yeah. I roughed him up a bit. Said, if he ever touched his daughter like that again I’d know about it. And then after that-I couldn’t just…I realized that I had the power to stop crimes before they happened and to take on the crime lords in Hell’s Kitchen. So how could I not?”

“Thanks for sharing that,” Clint says, then lets out an amused huff, “Yeah, that sounds cheesy as fuck but really, man, thanks.”

“You’re welcome. So um, how’d you get started?”

“Well, I was an orphan who ran away from the orphanage and joined the circus, as stereotypical as that sounds.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. It’s where I learned to shoot. Anyway, it was an evil circus and I ended up running away from that too. I was a hitman for a little while before SHIELD brought me in.”

“Why the career change?”

“The dental plan.”

Matt laughs.

“But really, SHIELD gave me direction, something to do with my skill set that would amount to more than be being dead in a ditch in ten years time. Then they turned out to be HYDRA so…”

“Rough turn.”

“Yep.”

 

“Let’s play murder in the dark!” Someone says.

“No! Natasha and the other agents always win!”

“Let’s play Psychiatrist.”

“How about the contest where we must answer truthfully or act bravely when called to do so?” Thor booms.

 

“Are they…?” Matt asks.

“Picking a slumber party game? Yep. Do you want to play?” Clint says.

 

“Ice cubes! Ice cubes! Can we play ice cubes?”

“Ice cubes is stupid.”

 

“I didn’t know they had such strong opinions.”

Clint laughs.

 

They end up playing a game that goes like this:

Everyone stands in a circle. One person turns to the person on their right and asks a question. The person being asked a question must not respond but must instead turn to the person on their right and ask another question. Anyone who responds or reacts loses and is out of the game.

The person, (Steve) to Matt’s left starts. “I’m sorry,” he says (very gentlemanly). “I don’t believe I caught your name?”

Matt bites his tongue. After a moment he glances around the circle, left to right, faux frightened. He ends on Clint (the person to his right) and says in a desperate whisper, “Wait, what are the rules? What am I supposed to do now?”

“You’re suposed to—”

Matt breaks out into a huge grin.

“Oh well fuck you,” Clint says. He steps out of the circle and everyone applauds.

“Well played.” Natasha says.

He sits through a round of “why is the sky blue?”, “so the arc reactor’s like…it’s basically magic, right?”, “had sex been invented in the 40s?” That last one, said by Natasha more expressively than anything else Matt’s ever heard her say, gets Steve out because despite his best efforts he chuckles.

The game goes on. Matt struggles not to fall back on “what color is” or “what does ___ look like?” as much as possible.

The game gets really fun when Bruce and Tony wind up next to each other and they ask absurd science questions. “Like, how many cars do you think can fit in space? I bet like, 3. Could you fit 3 cars in space? Or is that too many cars?”

“Is this weird and invasive? I don’t mean to be like, weird or invasive, but do you-do you-you know.” Bruce taps his chest. “You know! Do you have a heart?” He says it so sweetly Natasha lets out a dry “aw”.

Tony turns away as soon as the questions over, “Um, what are the first 100 digits of pi?” He asks Sam.

“How many tall things has Steve jumped off of since we were last on a mission together?” Sam blurts.

 

When it gets back to Natasha (now on Matt’s left) she drops the levity and says, “How did you know that man was lying, the second time I met you?”

Matt swallows. It’s not meant to be funny, it’s meant to throw him off and make him forget the next question. Which is stupid. And confusing. Because he can't tell if it's a game to her, if it's some stupid thing that's just meant to make him lose. Or if it's more important. And god, he can't tell. He wishes he could see her face...he turns to his right, aware that soon his lack of reaction was going to count as a reaction,“Does she always do this mood whiplash thing?”

That person turns, “Do you know what they’re talking about?”

 

When it gets back to Bruce the levity is regained. “So uh—” Bruce says, “I don’t suppose you ever thought about kissing me?”

Tony snorts so hard he starts choking. Bruce pats him on the back and everyone else applauds.  

“He’s the hardest to get out.” Natasha tells Matt.

“I thought that title would go to you.”

 

“Okay, but really,” Natasha says when it’s next her turn. “I want to know.”

“Is it,” Matt asks the person to his right. “Against the rules to repeat questions, or just bad strategy?”

 

When the game ends, it’s just him and Natasha. Matt asks, “Let’s call it a tie?” And Natasha repeats it back in an infinite loop.

“Yes, yes,” Tony interrupts them, “You’re both so sexy and clever. Tie, truce, stop. Game over.”

Matt offers his hand in a fist bump.

 

“Now that we’re not playing can I get you to answer the question?”

“Nope. I already told Clint my ‘origin story’, so I revealed enough for one night.”

“Can I ask him about it?”

“Sure, but I don’t know if he’ll tell you.”

“Yeah. He’s nice about keeping other people’s secrets.”

“Anyway, goodnight.”

“Goodnight.”

 

 


	11. Chapter 11

Matt’s unwrapping his hands after the end of a patrol, Natasha passing on the information given by their latest informant via text.

Once she’s putting her phone away he says, “I can hear their heartbeats.”

She freezes, he licks his lips.

“I don’t—”

“You asked me how I knew, when they were lying. I can hear their heartbeats.”

“So that’s your superpower.” She says.

Matt nods. “I can’t… turn it off or anything. But that’s how I can use it, to tell if people are lying.”

“Is it one hundred percent effective?”

“I don’t know.” He says, “You’ve never lied to me.” He quirks his lips.

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

 

 


	12. Chapter 12

The world is smoldering, dim and dark and undefined. He hears nothing but a persistent ringing. But he’s definitely awake, his breath rattling in his chest. Hands unexpectedly come to hold his head.

“Easy, easy,” Clint says. “Don’t move. Help’s coming. You hit your head pretty bad.”

Matt tries to calm his breathing but the whistling of air through his body is unsettling him. He reaches up to wrap his hand around Clint’s wrist, to feel his familiar pulse.

“You’re really banged up this time.” A slight spike in his rhythm lets Matt know how bad it is.

“Claire,” he rasps.

“Your nurse friend?”

He tries to nod.

“Don’t move your head! You might have a spinal injury, okay? Just stay still. I’ll call her, what’s the number?”

“I don’t know. It’s in my burner phone, right hand pocket.”

“It’s just me right now, but as soon as someone catches up to us we’ll call her, okay?”

 

That’s not what ends up happening. They bundle him into a backboard first and the rush of air currents makes him nauseous. “I’m going to vomit.” He declares.

“If you do, don’t try and move your head.” One of the medics say.

“What?”

“We don’t want you to move your spine. We have the supplies to deal with you vomiting in your mouth. It won’t be pleasant but you also won’t be paralyzed.”

“Lovely.”

It’s not until he’s strapped into the Quinjet that Clint nicks his phone and calls Claire over the ship speakers.

“What’s wrong?” she says as soon as she picks up.

The sound of her voice makes something tighten in his chest, brings home the gravity of having just fallen off of a skyscraper in the middle of a war zone. His breath catches and then it’s coming much too fast and he’s not getting enough oxygen.

“Deep breath” Claire tells him. “Shh, it’s okay. Just take a deep breath. It’s okay, you’re okay,” she continues to make soft noises that crackle over the speakers until Matt’s breathing evens out. “What do you need?”

“Can you come? To wherever they’re taking me?”

“What do you-what’s happened?”

One of the medics gives her a quick report.

“Of course I’ll come, do you need anything from your apartment, is there anyone else I should call?”

“My apartment, there’s a bag under my bed.” With this to focus on his head is suddenly clear of panic. “Make sure it has my cellphone, my watch, this sort of um, tablet reader thing, you’ll know it when you see it, and…my glasses and cane. Those last two will be on my nightstand, make sure you bring them.”

“Got it. I’ll be over there in just a sec.”

“Do you want someone to pick you up?” Clint asks.

“I know you,” Claire says.

“I’m the guy who ended up in your dumpster.”

“The second guy.”

“I can’t believe you need to specify that,” Clint mutters. “Yeah, that’s me. So, Tony can have a car pick you up from wherever.”

“Yeah,” Claire gives him an address a few blocks away from his house. “Be there in about half an hour.”

“I didn’t know you needed glasses,” Clint says to him after the line goes dead.

“I don’t.”

 

A doctor meets them in the ship’s hangar and establishes that Matt’s neck isn’t broken. They let him out of the restraints and he sits up gratefully, only to lean severely to one side. Clint stops him from falling, gripping him by the shoulders. “Woah there, man.”

“I’m gonna—” And then he throws up all over the both of them. “Sorry,” he croaks.

“God, it’s fine. Let’s just get you settled.”

Matt refuses to lie back down, his head had been pulverized by the hard plastic long enough. They wheel him, not to the medical ward but to one of the suites in the tower. Which is nice because it doesn’t smell even a little bit like rubbing alcohol or blood.

“The doctor wants to give you a quick checkover to look for other injuries. You definitely have a concussion.”

“Did I fall from a skyscraper?” Matt asks, suddenly unsure.

“No. Well, yes. You took a lot of really bad blows, I caught you before you fell off the skyscraper.”

“Now why did I do that?”

“Get your face mashed? I don’t know. There was this big explosion and then it was like you couldn’t regain focus.”

“Ah,” Matt says.

“Do you remember?”

“No.”

“So the doctor’s going to come over here, poke at your face, and see if anything’s broken.”

“’S okay.” Having another person running their hands across his face is incredibly different from doing the…well, feeling up, himself. It’s also very uncomfortable.

“Lots of bruising, no broken bones. You’ll be fine.”

“Alright, so now you need to get washed or changed, but preferably both. Do you think you can take a bath on your own right now?” Clint asks.

“Under JARVIS’ usual surveillance?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll be fine,” he says.

“Okay. I need to get washed up myself, but I’d like if someone were to stay in your bedroom in case you fall and can’t get up. Is that okay by you?”

Matt shrugs.

“Is there anyone else you wouldn’t mind vomiting on?”

Matt chuckles. “Steve’d probably apologize.”

“You sure? You don’t know him all that well.”

“That’s a little bit the point.”

“Alright. Do you need help standing?”

Matt struggles off the gurney on his own. He pats it, “Will this be gone by the time I get out?”

“Yep.”

“Okay.” And he hobbles off in the direction he remembers the bathroom being from his last venture into a suite laid out like this. He acts like he’s leaning against the wall for balance instead of to find the door.

He hears Clint leave and Steve enter a little while later.

He makes sure the door is closed but unlocked (even though JARVIS could probably unlock it if something happened, or Steve, with all his super soldier strength, could just break in). He strips and sits in the tub as it starts to fill.

“You okay in there?” Steve calls.

“Fine, just concussed and horribly bruised.”

The tub’s about half full so he turns off the water. He doesn’t know where the soap and shampoo are, and he has to fumble around to find them. “What’s Claire’s ETA?” he asks.

JARVIS responds.

After a pause Steve says, “Can I ask who Claire is?”

“A nurse friend of mine who patches me up after I get into trouble.”

There’s another long pause before Steve says, “Can I ask what your name is?”

“Matt.”

“You know, I don’t think Clint or Natasha know that.”

“I know, we’re at that stage in our friendship where it’s kind of awkward to ask.”

“Yeah, Clint just calls you ‘Other Dumpster Guy’ since we know lots of men in masks. I have no idea why.”

“One of the times I ran into him, early on, he was at Claire’s being patched up. She found him in her dumpster, which also just so happens to be how she met me.”

Steve laughs. “I’m not going to make it weird if I say you're suddenly very talkative?”

“No.” Matt says, “You don’t think it’s the concussion talking, do you?” He waits for some small flare in his anxiety but it doesn’t come.

“I don’t think they work like that,” Steve says.

He imagines them finding out he’s blind, that his full name is Matthew Murdock, that he’s a lawyer. And there is some worry, concern, and fear. But it’s nothing like he’s used to being around them. (When did his walls come down?) He lets out a shaky exhale.

Steve must hear (he also probably has enhanced senses) “Something wrong?”

“I just realized I don’t have anything to change into.”

“JARVIS will have something brought up, right?”

“Correct, sir. Will you need a pair of sunglasses as well?”

“Claire is bringing mine.” He takes a shuttering breath, “I should be fine.”

It takes him a while, in his discoordination and exhaustion, to wash all the dirt and sweat and blood off.

 

“The clothes here yet?” He’d stop listening to anything other than Steve’s voice and the swish of water around him.

“Yes, do you want me to just set them in the room?”

“Sure.” (The way the bath’s laid out you can’t really see the tub from the door.)

The door creaks open, there’s a soft thud, and then it closes. Once he hears the click he pulls himself out of the tub, carefully, and towels off. (Thankfully he remembered to find a towel and place it by the side of the tub.) He pulls the drain and listens to the sound of the water rushing down it while he dresses. Washes the mask in the sink with hand soap, just to get the worse of the sweat and blood out, before ringing it out and putting it back on.

“I’m coming out.” He declares incase Steve is still sitting against the wall next to the door. He’s not. Matt can’t tell where he is in the room. He bites back a _where are you?_ And instead closes his eyes and focuses on breathing deep. “What’s the ETA on Claire?”

“She just entered the building.” JARVIS replies. “She’ll be at your position in less than ten minutes.”

He moves to the sitting area, slow and careful, because he doesn’t want to bump Steve, and leans against the wall.

The silence feels awkward and Matt tries to focus to see if Steve’s even in the room anymore. He didn’t hear the door if he left…

Matt spends the rest of the less than ten minutes trying to figure out if a silence can be awkward if he’s alone in the room.

 

“Hey.” Claire says, a little out of breath, as she throws the door open and walks toward him. “I got your bag, glasses and everything.” She, in handing it to him, bumps it against his chest.

He wraps his fingers, not around the straps, but claws them into what part of the material he can reach. “Thank you,” he says and maneuvers to the bed.

“Oh, hey,” she says, the tone confirming that Steve is in fact still in the room. “What are you doing here?”

“Uh. I was told treatment for a concussion included observing the individual. I don’t know what I’m looking for, though.”

“That’s fine. I got it from here if you want to change out of your superhero getup or whatever.”

Matt determines he’s reached the bed by colliding (gently, because he meant to) with it. He dumps the contents out over the comforter and runs his hands over it. He pockets the phone, puts on the watch, trades mask for glasses, and picks up his cane. He straightens and asks, “What now?”

“Whatever you’re up for. You should rest, Claire can watch over you here or you can come to the common room. We have movies, video games, you can pick.”

“I, um.” He takes a deep breath, tries to sort his skittish thoughts. He runs his hands over his cane (still folded up) and loops a wrist through the strap.

“No one’s going to be upset if you want to hang out with just Clint and Nat, or whoever your favorites are.”

He focuses on taking deep breaths, there’s that anxiety. “You know,” He says, “I’ve never actually gotten a proper tour of the tower. How about…I introduce myself to everyone and you, uh, do the tour thing.”

“Sure.”

He extends his elbow in the general direction he remembers Claire being, and calls her name. She loops her arm through his and leads him out of the room. As they’re walking to the common room Steve clears his throat and says, “So are you two, uh, together?”

“No.” Claire says definitively, “I can’t…date someone in that lifestyle. You know, worrying all the time if he’s going to get killed.”

“But you worry anyway,” Matt says.

“Yeah. Stairs.”

At the bottom she leads them off to one side.

“You feeling better?” Clint asks.

“Less pain, about the same amount of disorientation.”

“That’s good, right?”

Matt smiles, “Sure. So um. I just, by the way, I’m Matt.”

Clint laughs. “Great, I can stop calling you-”

“Other dumpster dude, yeah, Steve told me.”

“Okay, so um—”

“You wanted a tour of the tower?” Steve interjects.

“I um, I feel like I should tell everyone else my name as well.” (They aren’t in the room right now?)

“Sure. I mean, it’s weird to call a conference just for that, but the rest will gather here to play video games soon enough. You can tell them then. Most of them won’t want to go on a tour. Tony will enjoy telling you all about the R&D labs. But everyone else has already been through this rodeo.”

“So, um.”

“Whatever you want until then?”

“Yeah, uh, okay.”

He stands there awkwardly for a little bit until Claire says, “Do you want to sit? Maybe listen to some music?”

Matt mulls that over, trying to understand what was going to happen next, trying to figure out if anyone else was in the room. He nods, “Yeah.” Claire nudges him left, until he's in front a chair, and then places her hand in his shoulder and pushes. He falls into it rather harder than he meant to.

“I don’t suppose you have vinyl?” Claire asks.

“I don’t think so. Tony’s a music snob but he’s also a tech geniuses and thinks that whatever file type he’s got is better than records,” Steve says.

Matt smiles at that. “Just put something on, kind of soft.”

Classical music starts playing. And okay, it sounds better than your average MP3. He’d need his own record player and to not have a concussion to make a definitive conclusion about which is better.

He relaxes against the chair, holds the cane in his lap. After a while someone starts up a video game, volume on mute. The clicking of the controller is relaxing.

He finds he wants to ask Claire what kind of game they’re playing. More people come into the room, more controllers are added to the soft, clicking symphony.

“How many people are there going to be total?”

“We’re mostly just waiting for Tony. Though, I don’t want to give him too much more time,” Clint says. “He’s not guaranteed to come out of his lab unless the world is ending.”

“Should we just start now then?” Matt asks.

“If you want to.” Clint says.

Matt moves in the chair, sitting up. “Hello,” he says to the gathered, the end of the word whooshing into a sigh. He’s not used to not knowing who’s in a room, or at least how many people there are. He just has to resign himself to the fact that Natasha is going to completely evade him until he’s back to himself. “I, um. You’ve probably have enough information to figure out who I am for a long time. I- uh…Just want to thank you for not doing that.” He takes a deep breath. “My name’s Matthew. Matt.” He considers adding a last name but can’t quite make himself do it.

The rest go around the room with a chorus of their names, since they never did it properly either. It lets him know about where Natasha’s sitting.

“I um…I’m really…vulnerable right now. Disoriented, confused. I’m used to maintaining a wall here and a level of awareness that I…don’t the rest of the time. I’m not…I-" He takes another deep breath and shakes his head, not sure how to finish that sentence. “I can’t maintain it, right now,” he says instead. And then there’s a flare of anxiety and he wishes he was holding Claire’s hand. “That’s, um,” he manages to get out, “all I have to say.”

“So that tour of the tower,” Clint starts, and Matt flinches before he can help himself. “Can’t actually happen,” Clint changes track, “Because Tony’s not here. And Tony would be sad if he didn’t get to talk your ear off about how wonderful the architect is.”

“Can we just um…be somewhere else? Not in this building?” Matt asks. “I, um—”

“Of course.” Natasha says. "Though you should rest."

“Someplace outside, but quiet, not too crowded.” He ignores that last part, focuses on breathing evenly, on not trying to focus on sensing a world fractured and distorted and out of reach.

“How about Central Park?” Steve suggests.

Matt nods and stands. He offers his elbow to the direction Claire was.

“I actually don’t think I have anything else to say,” he says once the group’s in the elevator. He doesn’t—he just…They’re going to see. And he’s probably going to be fine. He even feels up to explaining what happened, all of it.

“Don’t make it weird,” he whispers. Steve and Natasha can probably hear him.

Once they’re out of the building he reclaims his arm and starts unfolding the cane, still looped around his wrist. He’s aware they’re probably staring. But maybe they’re not. (Don’t make it weird.)

When he’s got his cane settled, grabbed with his index finger down the shaft, he starts walking and the tip hits someone with in a few paces. He keeps flicking it back and forth to see if they’re going to move. “You’re staring, aren’t you?” The feet move.

Claire brushes up against him as they walk to the park.

Once they get their, Clint, from his left says, “Hey, so I thought you knew because everyone can see my hearing aids, but I’m deaf.”

Matt smiles “I, um. Don’t know what to say. Thanks for telling me.” He tucks his cane against his shoulder.

“So can we ask?” Clint says.

“I haven’t always been blind,” Matt replies. "I was in an accident when I was nine. A bunch of chemicals got dumped on me, in my eyes. That’s how I went blind. But all my other senses became enhanced due to the radiation or whatever. So I can kind of piece together a really good spacial awareness and understanding of what’s around me. That’s how I do the things I do. It takes a lot of energy, so I don’t do it all the time, or only focus on some of the sensory information I pick up. But yeah, I’m still blind. And when I have a brain injury I can’t do it at all.”

 

The others mill about, just enjoying a day in the park. Claire sits next to him as he enjoys the sun on his skin and the smell of the air, for once free of all the information about exhaust and smoke and toxins. It’s nice but…yeah. He misses that world on fire.

Natasha sits on his other side and says, “I knew,” without much inflection, though Matt thinks there’s a hint of smugness there.

“I know.” He replies.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have so many other ideas for them finding out who Matt is and that's he's blind could have gone. But this one was the best for trust so I decided to go with it.
> 
> I want to write one where Matt helps in a Bucky Barnes trial and has to see if he can merge the world of the Avengers with the one of his little law firm.
> 
> But I actually don't like courtroom dramas and I have no understanding of the legal side of how to help Bucky so I probably won't.

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to message or follow me on tumblr at dusty-soul.tumblr.com


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